Is Lavarnway catching on, or not?

Ryan Lavarnway has made some progress as a big-league catcher, but not enough to sew up the starting job.

Brian MacPherson Journal Sports Writer brianmacp

NEW YORK — Ryan Lavarnway feels like the blindfold has been taken off.

One of the disadvantages of catching in the minor leagues is the almost complete lack of scouting reports on opponents — particularly hitters. There are no hot zones or spray charts. There isn’t much video to study. An inability to hit a slider or a hole in a swing on the outer half of the plate often can go completely unnoticed.

In the major leagues, on the other hand, the avalanche of available information can even be overwhelming. Every at-bat can be dissected. Every pitch can be classified, its results plugged into a spreadsheet. It takes just the click of a mouse to determine how each hitter has hit curveballs down and away or fastballs up and in.

“Going into a game in the minors, you don’t know the hitters,” Lavarnway said. “You’re kind of blind. In the big leagues, you have a game plan of how you want to go about it.”

Still, no catcher can understand just how to use the information at hand without a little bit of experience. That a hitter might chase a slider out of the strike zone 60 percent of the time doesn’t mean much unless a catcher knows how to put the information to use.

As Lavarnway has split time with Jarrod Saltalamacchia over the last two months — Lavarnway caught 15 games, Saltalamacchia nine — he’s learned how to use the information he has available.

“There’s more information than you could possibly use,” he said. “You learn what parts are helpful and what parts I don’t necessarily need, and I try to use that information on the weaknesses of the hitters in conjunction with what I know to be the strengths of the pitchers.”

Reliever Chris Carpenter had runners at first and third with one out in the seventh inning on Sunday afternoon when he threw a slider in the dirt to the Orioles’ Adam Jones, trying to get him to chase. Had the ball gotten away, as can happen on those pitches, a run could have scored and the possibility of a double play could have been negated.

Lavarnway went down and blocked it. Both runners stayed put.

Two pitches later, Jones grounded into an inning-ending double play.

Lavarnway still looks stiff and awkward at times. He cost the Red Sox a run in Seattle because he couldn’t smother a throw from the outfield that he said, “I absolutely need to keep in front of me.”

Opponents also have been successful 28 of the 31 times they’ve tried to steal a base with Lavarnway behind the plate, a rate of 90.3 percent that’s well higher than the 82.1 percent of Saltalamacchia or the 65.5 percent of the since-traded Kelly Shoppach.

Catchers’ ERA is a dubious statistic at best, and, as such, it tells two distinctly different stories about Lavarnway and Saltalamacchia. As a whole, for whatever it’s worth, Red Sox pitchers have a 5.75 ERA when pitching to Lavarnway and a 4.71 ERA when pitching to Saltalamacchia.

But Lavarnway has caught both of the disastrous starts of Zach Stewart and seven starts by Aaron Cook and Daisuke Matsuzaka. Both Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester — again, for whatever it’s worth — have a lower ERA pitching to Lavarnway than to Saltalamacchia.

And whether Lavarnway proves adequate behind the plate or not, he still has to hit. He hasn’t hit at all since his call-up in early August. Entering play Monday night at Yankee Stadium, he was hitting .170 with a .222 on-base percentage and .270 slugging percentage. He’s hit as many home runs in more than 150 at-bats — two — as he hit in a single game last September in Baltimore.

That comes on the heels of a Triple-A season in which he hit .295 with a .376 on-base percentage and a .439 slugging percentage. The on-base percentage was typical for him — it matched the previous year’s number exactly, in fact — but the slugging percentage was well off his typical pace.

A torrid July made up for three otherwise lackluster months in which he slugged under .400.

“I haven’t really felt like myself at all this year,” he said. “Even when I had that strong month, that’s not my kind of strong month, if you know what I mean. I’ve stayed positive. I know it’ll come around. This is the first time I’ve not been myself. It’s kind of uncharted territory.

“I know I’m a good hitter. I just need to let my body remember how to do it.”

Any chance Lavarnway had of winning the catching job outright before next Opening Day probably is gone. But this season has been quite a learning experience for him nonetheless.